Game Addiction - I: Myths About Gaming's Impact on Health - Extra Credits

Hello again everyone. We've got a pretty sizable topic for you today. Please join me in welcoming this week's guest artist, Hyunwoo Macko. You can just call him Mack. He's worked in games a while. He runs a webcomic called Iris the VG Gal, and he'll be helping us out with this two-part series on game addiction. Let's get right into it. Whenever we talk publicly about the good games can do or about their nature as an emerging tool for exploring who we are, we're frequently confronted by people asking one question. Well, what about all those people whose lives have been ruined by being addicted to gaming? Buried within this often hostile statement is actually a very important question. One that we as a community should probably be exploring more than we do. The tragedy of modern gaming is that all the hype and the hysteria around {quote} game addiction distracts from real underlying issues. Issues that need dealing with because they're seriously affecting the lives of members of our community. But as much as I'd love to jump right to that part of the discussion, we're going to have to save most of it for next

week. Before we can get to the stuff that really matters, we have to address that hype because it comes up a lot and without clearing the air of all the scaremongering that surrounds the issue, it usually just ends up with everyone drawing lines in the sand. Number one, there is no epidemic of people dying from playing too many video games. There's been a lot of sensationalist journalism around people dying at their computer screens having played games until their hearts gave out. They usually paint this phenomenon as an epidemic which threatens to engulf a generation and that is simply not true. In fact, it is so not true to the point of actually being ridiculous. Most of the examples cited come out of South Korea, but there are more fatalities ascribed to fan death in South Korea every year than are pinned on game addiction. In the United States, more people have died from water intoxication in the last decade than from game addiction. And hey, it's been said before, but high school sports hospitalizes more than 30,000 kids in the US every year according to the CDC. But none of those things are considered epidemics. In almost every case involving game-related death or violence surrounding the interruption of play, the broader mental health of the individuals involved has either been demonstrably impaired or severely called into question during proceedings. The epidemic of gaming deaths is not a real

issue. It's a sensationalist smoke screen to get ratings and to demonize games. There is no way to squeeze a meaningful dialogue out of that conversation. And that leads us to number two. Gaming is not addictive. Addiction refers to the fundamental altering of brain chemistry, something that games have never been shown to do. No, no. What gaming is is compelling. And this may seem like a semantic point, but it fundamentally changes both how we think about game compulsion and how we address it. Number three. Gaming compulsion can exist and still not make games an evil thing. This one's something that I feel like needs to be addressed within our community. We generally tend to be very defensive about games and often rightly so. I mean, they're getting unfairly criticized all the time. Games aren't as bad as they're often made out to be, but if we're being totally honest with ourselves, it doesn't mean that everything about gaming's perfect either. And more importantly, it doesn't mean that everything about gaming has to be perfect for it to still be a good thing. I mean, the invention of the automobile's done our society all kinds of good, but that doesn't mean cars haven't caused a few problems, too. Things don't have to be perfect to be good. Now, sometimes you can't go talking about all the faults to people who are already determined to demonize

gaming. I understand. But we've got to at least be able to admit them to ourselves. If we don't take the higher road and accept some of the negative aspects of gaming, we're never going to be able to fix them. And like I said, that's the kind of thing we're going to focus more on in part two. Number four. Game compulsion doesn't exist in isolation. Next week's discussion will be largely focused on teens and adults, but before we wrap up today, we should talk about game compulsion as it applies to children. Often in the news, you'll hear about how the newest generation's growing up addicted to games, how they spend 8 to 10 hours a day in front of a screen, how they're losing touch with the world at large. And while the addiction term may be a bit sensationalist, the rest is kind of true. It may not be true to the terrifying extent the news would have you believe, but it is very much a real issue. But this form of game compulsion doesn't exist in isolation. You can't just blame all of this on games. I mean, we hear the same complaint leveled against television all the time. The problem doesn't stem inherently from these media. It's a larger societal issue. Blaming games or TV for kids leading a life focused entirely around these forms of media is simply a way of dodging responsibility. Look, there's no other way to say it. If a kid's spending 9 hours a day in front of a screen,

there's some serious bad parenting going on. Games are an easy babysitter. They're interactive. They're something a child can engage with when they don't get to engage with another human being. And unfortunately, that's how they're often being used by busy or lazy parents every day. But that's not how they should be used. Now, we often hear all of this television demagoguery about taking away children's access to video games and just force them to go outside. But from my perspective, that never seems to work. What you want is for your kids to have a healthy relationship with games. Play games with them. Share that part of their lives. Even without actually playing, a parent just sitting on the couch talking to a child, encouraging them and cheering them on while they play can convert an alienating, isolating experience into a bonding one that the child will carry with them. And while sharing the medium with the child, a parent can also teach how to get the most out of it, how to approach it responsibly, and how to learn from it. We just have to be willing to find the time to raise our children rather than leaving them for the machines to nurture. Most of the claims surrounding game addiction are grossly exaggerated. Even the term itself is a misnomer. But behind all that, there are serious issues which we'll have to tackle. The first is that of raising children in a world pervaded by games, and accepting the

responsibility to play those games with our children rather than simply using them as a digital babysitter. And you know who's going to have to step up and do this first? The gaming community. We've got to start figuring out how to engage with our kids when they play, and demonstrating that better parenting makes games a positive element in the lives of our kids. And I'm not saying that because it's somehow our responsibility to take that first noble step. I'm just saying I mean, in all the world, who's better equipped to do this than we are? After all, who's going to connect better than people who already love games? I think we are uniquely qualified to solve this problem. Now, there's one last issue to tackle, game compulsion in adults. We're going to try to follow this up next week with our thoughts on those who have abandoned their lives in the real world for an existence focused on the virtual realm. It's a hugely complex topic and requires a great deal more space than we have left here. And we want to make sure we do it justice. So, until next week. Thanks for watching. We'll see you then.